indulge myfelf in the vanity of faying that I have, in my time, been well with the fair fex, and have even been countenanced fo far as to be admitted into a degree of acquaintance and familiarity with fome ladies of the highest quality and diftinction. And of thefe, I have conftantly observed, that, though bred up at home, they had a manifeft advantage over their travelled brothers, I was going to fay, in learning and fcience, but certainly in true politeness, good sense, and even a knowledge of the world.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

I UNDERSTAND this civility to the ladies, as a decent atonement for your late freedoms with them. In this light I fhould be unwilling to cavil at it: and yet I fee not, how your high encomiums on the fuperior good fenfe and politeness of these home-bred ladies can confift with the paffion, you before cenfured

in

in them, for foreign travel, as favourable, in their opinion, to the production of fuch virtues.

MR. LOCKE.

My confiftency in this reprefentation, I doubt, is lefs queftionable, than my civility. For the ladies, on whom I bestowed thofe high, but just encomiums, were chiefly fuch as I had known in my younger days, before the paffion for travel had got among them. Now indeed the cafe is altering apace, and the effects are answerable. The virtues of the English ladies, when they ftaid at home, were more confpicuous than those of our travelled gentlemen. Now that they, too, begin to travel, their follies are, also, more glaring: in either cafe, I am willing to own, for the credit of my civility, from the fame reason, that both good and ill qualities ftrike us moft, when fet in the precious metal of that fex.

HOWEVER, from the whole of my experience, I muft needs conclude, that this finishing of a travelled education only ferves to corrupt good qualities, or inflame bad ones.

BUT the ladies are not in my province. If they were, a knowledge of the world is not the leading virtue I might wish to see them poffeffed of. In the men, I confefs, this accomplishment is of more importance; and I am therefore folicitous, that no well-meaning youth, whom it fo much concerns to gain a knowledge of the world, fhould be misled in his fearch of it.

SERIOUSLY, my Lord, the wORLD, - which I am forced to repeat fo often, is a folemn word, and the study of it has an air of fomething plaufible and impofing. But thofe, who know what the world is, will think it beft that a young

man

man begin with what is the first and last concern of every man, the study of himself; and if, in due time, he come to understand, and, ftill more, to value as they deserve, the characters of the great and good men of his own country, the opprobrious name of home-bred will not hinder him from acquiring the best fruit, with which a knowledge of the world, rightly understood, can furnish him.

FOR, my Lord, I must not, on fo inviting an occafion as this, conceal an odd fancy of mine from your Lordship.

THE affair of knowing the world, about which weak and fantastic people make fo much noife, and which one hears them perpetually infifting upon with fo much fufficiency, is of all others the nicest and most momentous step that is made in education. And, though volumes have been written to teach us how we may beft become scholars,

orators,

orators, courtiers, what not; yet not one leaf do I ever remember to have feen, composed by any capable man, that inftructs us in the proper way of getting into this great fecret.

It is not a matter to be entered upon, if I were vain enough to think myself capable of it, in this cafual conversation; but thus much I may prefume to say, that whoever defigns to let a young man into a fafe and useful knowledge of the world, muft do it in a way very remote from that which has hitherto been taken.

A YOUNG man, they tell us, muft know the world; therefore, fay they, push him into it at once, that he may ac quire that knowledge, which his own experience, and not another's, muft procure for him.

I, ON